The Sanctity of Life

As I reflect back on my past, I emerge at a time and a place—a setting that remains with me even though the face of the man I remember is no longer clear in my mind.

Before me was a middle-aged Indian man. I would frequent his store to buy things for my mother as well as for myself. Over the course of time, our frequent encounters became more than casual exchanges. They became lessons in perception, culture, and philosophy. Understanding the mindset and philosophy of another person can go a long way toward understanding the world beyond our own experience.

As time passed, he reflected on his Indian culture and shared those reflections with me as a young, white male.

I remember very vividly the ideas about life that he portrayed to me. He would say, “In my culture, life is sacred. I don’t wish to harm or take life. Even down to the very smallest of creatures—even the ant.”

Those words had a profound impact on me then, and somehow they remain with me today.

Regardless of culture, race, ethnicity, nationality, or the other categories by which modern society divides human beings, there is something fundamental that we can recognize: life is precious.

The very essence of Earth is life and the biological systems that sustain it. What would we be without life? This is the question that sometimes seems to rise from my subconscious into my conscious mind.

Sometimes I think about why man acts the way he does.

Do the selfish desires of the present cause us to disregard the consequences of the future? Do our immediate ambitions become so important that we forget the value of the life around us?

The presence and essence of life should not be denied because of the selfish desires of man.

What does that mean?

It means putting life before personal agenda. It means recognizing that our actions have consequences. It means holding one another accountable not only for what we do, but sometimes for what we fail to do.

I cannot help but think about the taking of innocent life—life that never had the opportunity to experience the wonders of existence without fear, anxiety, hunger, or violence. The establishment of law does not, by itself, guarantee the protection of life from those who seek to take it without a second thought or care for its value.

And yet life continues.

All life is interconnected. We, as human beings, are connected to the Earth and to the biological systems that sustain us. There is something resembling a life force that moves through the living world—a force that drives organisms toward existence, survival, growth, and continuation.

To me, there is something deeply sacred about that.

My thinking here is an assimilation of ideas I have encountered in both Hindu thought and Islamic teachings: the reverence for life, the interconnectedness of living things, and the moral responsibility associated with taking a life.

The Qur’an expresses this profound principle in describing the unjust taking of one life as being like the taking of the life of all humanity, while saving a life is likened to saving all humanity.

The idea resonates with something much larger than law.

Law can tell us what is permitted. Justice can tell us what is accountable. But neither necessarily explains the deeper question:

Why does life matter in the first place?

Perhaps that answer lies somewhere within the very nature of existence.

To think that law and governance can sometimes work against that life force—that inner spirit, that light that exists within us—is difficult for me to reconcile. We create systems to protect life, yet human beings can also use those same systems, or act outside of them, in ways that place life in jeopardy.

There are no friends or foes at the most fundamental level.

There are simply living beings, each experiencing existence from a different perspective, shaped by different cultures, histories, beliefs, fears, desires, and perceptions of life.

Yet I sit here and write about these things because I hope that one day we can live peacefully in our diversity. I hope we can recognize that beneath our differences is something we all share: the experience of being alive.

Perhaps the lesson that man once taught me in that small store was much greater than I understood at the time.

Life is precious.

Life is interconnected.

And perhaps life itself deserves our reverence.

Human or otherwise, every living thing occupies a place within the greater system we call Earth. Each form of life participates in the continuation of something much larger than itself.

Life has the right to exist.

And perhaps our responsibility as human beings is not merely to survive within that system, but to learn how to protect it, respect it, and live within it without unnecessarily destroying the very thing that gives existence meaning.